Thursday, December 5, 2013

Insane!

I've posted a number of tales here at THOIA over the years with the same "Insane!" title as this one, but never one from this particular Story Comics series-- the October 1954 issue of Mysterious Adventures #22 in fact! Art credits go to Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, with a chilly cool cover from the great Hy Fleishman! I'll have more from this crazy ass issue over the next few posts, so hang on tight-- things are gonna get even more insane, I guarantee!

8 comments:

A little wordy in places but the art is great, the inmates really do look insane and our villain is drawn in a relatively grotesque way to point out his evil.

I could do without the silly twist at the end; otherwise a fun little story. These inmates/prisons/etc get revenge stories work best if you spend most of the pages turning the bad guy into the most cartoonish evil you can (like this one) and this one is well paced.

I'm not sure about the weird skulls on the splash, looks like a later addition to punch it up. Kind of strange in context!

Man, I loved that splash--there is something about the bland, undynamic millieu that's really creepy--but it is kind of an excellent example of a twist beginning, what with its implications of paranormal horror.

I loved the story too. I love all asylum and hospital horror stories. This one was oddly compassionate, at least for a yarn about the brutal revenge of an deranged mob. I'd love to see it get amped about a hundred and fifty percent, à la Eerie Pubs. Really grue-up that snowman scene: bright blue frozen grimace of horror, button sewn into amputated nose-hole, eye sockets filled with glowing coal. You know.

This was a pretty good tale with the usual twist ending. The villain in this story reminded me of the movie "Tales From the Crypt" by Amicus, where the uncaring director for a home for the blind gets his in the end.

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